Lickability

lickability

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People who make apps people love.

We’re back from another successful summer retreat! These are so valuable every year, and we’re excited to show you what came from a few days of close-quarters, collaborative fun. 👀

Oh, and it’s not a true iOS-centric dev sprint without the nest of MacBook charging cables… 😝

Lickability team members sitting at a conference table with their laptops looking at a presentation and discussing ideas among themselves with a painting in the background.

A conference table full of MacBook laptops with the center charging station occupied entirely by white charging bricks.

A Lickability team member shotgunning a tiny ceramic cup of espresso while other team members sit on either side focused on their laptops.

The entire Lickability team posed at a long restaurant table with menus and drinks in front of them, turned to look at the camera.

• Well-designed • Solves a problem • Used every day

(You can only pick 2)

This week on our blog: a little love for what coined “single-serving apps.”

We canvassed ourselves, and a few friends of the team, for some of our favorite examples.

👋 Hey! We’re having a busy summer, but we wanted to highlight 2 more apps we’ve been using since people seem to enjoy learning about things we’re finding useful and fun!

One is iOS native/works on MacOS, the other is a web app, and both are art and design-centric.

First is tone, a freemium app for iOS and MacOS by Shikaka, Inc.

apps.apple.com/us/ap… There are a lot of great solutions for “solving” printed aesthetics using shaders, but this is a great, lightweight, standalone option with good accuracy!

Screenshot of the tone app's UI with a sample image loaded in.

A photo of water lilies in a pond taken by Lickability team member Lily.

The previous photo of water lilies run through the tone app, giving it the appearance of screen printing with some off-colors and chromatic abbaration.

And the other is dithergarden.com by Alicia Pérez, a shader-based webapp and the last word in digital dithering! 15 algorithms, 4 color modes, and completely free.

A screenshot of dither garden's home page, mission statement and instructions.

A creative commons photo of a hummingbird run through dither garden to give it a stippled, stylized, magenta-and-pink effect.

A photo of an atrium taken by Lickability team member Lily run through dither garden and reduced to 3 colors: pink, light blue, and dark grey.

An extra-special footnote: this awesome print media project, using dither garden during the creation process, by a friend of the team: ky.fyi

A screenshot of ky's post on Bluesky, showing their final product: an artful collage of wild geese in flight with increasing dither made into a photopolymer print on paper.

A screenshot of ky's post on Bluesky, showing an artful collage of wild geese in flight with increasing dither made using dither garden.

A screenshot of ky's post on Bluesky, showing the original photo from which the final project was assembled and created.

A screenshot of ky's post on Bluesky, showing the WIP / behind the scenes shots of the final print's process.

I was talking with Tom, our Client Partnerships Director and resident golf guru, and the subject of “single-serving apps” came up: ones you rely on heavily during certain events and then don’t open the rest of the year. He cited The Masters app as a perfect example.

“It peaks the charts every year and is hailed as being the ‘best app in all of sports.’ It supports live activities, widgets, and had a brand new Vision Pro experience this year. But once the Masters is over, people obviously aren’t talking about it much.”

We canvassed the team for our own ideas which we’ll revisit soon, but we want to know from you: What’s the best example of a single-serving app you’ve used? One where you want to give the devs and designers extra kudos, or wish they were developing some of your “daily driver” apps? 🤔